


Portgas D. Anne and the War of Shirts

by glowingjellyfishtreelights



Category: One Piece
Genre: Fem!Ace, did not exactly happen that way, frequent mentions of shirtlessness, was supposed to be exploring anime nosebleed logic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 22:03:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11587071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowingjellyfishtreelights/pseuds/glowingjellyfishtreelights
Summary: In which Portgas D. Anne is physically incapable of getting through a fight without losing her shirt, being the first mate of the Spade Pirates is Suffering, and Izo has powers beyond mortal ken.





	Portgas D. Anne and the War of Shirts

**Author's Note:**

> Okay look basically for some reason my brain decided to think about anime nosebleed logic, specifically Sanji’s and then for some reason I thought about Ace and then my brain jumped from that to ‘wait would female Ace even wear a shirt’ and then to ‘oh my word would Sanji even be able to look her in the eye’ and  
> This happened.  
> And Sanji and the Straw-hats didn’t even end up showing up or anything I don’t even know with this thing anymore #don’t let jelly write right after waking up

It is, more or less, common knowledge that Fire Fist Anne cannot keep a shirt on her torso for an extended period of time to save her life.

It’s joked about, mostly crudely, sometimes incredulously. Even if you’re made of fire, it can’t be  _ that _ hard not to burn off your clothing. After all, the woman’s hat, shorts, necklace, and even her strange elbow-brace thing always seemed fine after any fight. Surely one more object wouldn’t be that much more of a strain?

Some people hypothesized it was a lack of control, especially in the start, when the East Blue rookie clawed her way right into the Grand Line after only two months of being a pirate. The more favored theory, regarded as far more likely as time went on, was that it was just her screwing with everyone, just because she was a pirate and she could. Other people just didn’t care, but feverently thanked the heavens for the pictures, often awkwardly cropped, that showed up in the news whenever the Spade Pirates (and later, as part of the Whitebeard Pirates) did something audacious again.

Still other people just wanted Fire Fist to _keep her d--- shirt on_ long enough for _someone_ to get a picture for her bounty poster, d---it! There’ve been people complaining about inappropriateness and ‘I don’t want my child’s eyes seeing that sort of thing!’, and because they actually have the nerve to complain to the _Marines_ they’re mostly nobility, which mean that they actually have to _try_ , even though honestly, Fire-Fist without her shirt is a better identifier than Fire Fist _with_ her shirt. It’s a far more common sight, in any case.

In short, you’d think that, at the very least, people would go into fights and the like against Fire Fist at least  _ expecting _ such a thing to happen at some point. The rumors and stories might all have differences, but the shirtlessness is just as unerringly  _ there _ right along with the orange hat, the fire, and the freckles. When a clear pattern like that’s present, surely people would notice and prepare themselves accordingly?

Ahahahaha.

Nope.

  
  


-

  
  


Quoi almost misses the days he wasn’t utterly jaded by the actions and overall existence of Portgas D. Anne.

‘Almost’ because instead of his days being packed with  _ possibility of death by act of Anne _ they used to be full of  _ possibility of death by own stupid actions  _ and it’s nice to have someone to blame for once. 

He’s the first mate, and a pirate besides, he’s allowed to pin all the blame on his wonderful, oblivious mess of a captain. Emphasis on ‘oblivious’ and ‘mess’, because a) oh dear Lord, is she ever, and b) oh dear  _ Lord _ , is she ever.

But his captain’s personal issues aren’t the point here. 

The  _ point  _ here is that Quoi spent about a week being alternatively utterly horrified and awed at Anne’s….  _ everything _ , and by the time the week passed, that was gone. Just gone.

In its place, a sort of tolerant exasperation had risen in it’s place, an automatic,  _ maybe  _ kind of fond, passively amused mental sigh at his captain’s actions. Who, and he might have mentioned (read; griped about) this before, had absolutely no shame whatsoever.

Quoi feels that it’s very safe to state this, seeing as the first conversation he had with the woman, at the time all of seventeen, was held with the both of them completely shirtless and also slightly smoldering.

Quoi would like to note that this conversation happened about a full week before Anne ate her Devil Fruit. He would also like to add that the fact that the date coincides with the loss of his ability to be horrified by the basically-daily actions of Portgas D. Anne is not a coincidence in the slightest. 

But back to their meeting. The setting; a clearing only lightly on fire, Quoi standing, more than a little shell-shocked and mind still scrambling to try to untangle the last five minutes into something that makes sense, a set of shackles dangling carelessly from the hand of the wiry, freckled teenage girl who just used the things to knock out the large thug of a man she’s currently perching on, balanced on the balls of her feet with her elbows on her knees, as casual as can be, grinning at him like she didn’t just take out five thugs on her lonesome and that they weren’t both currently in states of shirtlessness for no real explicable reason. 

“Hi,” the girl said cheerfully, apparently utterly unbothered by her complete lack of torso covering in front of a man about a solid decade her senior at the  _ least _ . “Wanna join my crew?”

Quoi’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, and he took a very deep breath before abruptly bending down and starting to wrestle the vest off of the unconscious lump of muscle nearest to his feet, because he could only think about one thing at a time right now and his mother raised him to be a semi-decent human being, which meant not letting a teenage girl have to wander around without half of her clothing in front of strangers.

He held out the somewhat disgusting vest to the girl, who rolled her eyes, probably at the grime, but thankfully put it on. She didn’t button it up, but at least it was covering the important parts, therefore allowing Quoi to look her in the face without feeling like he was doing something disgusting just by standing in front of her.

“So?” the girl prodded, head tilting to the side, strange, bright orange hat sliding slightly askew in the action, the dangling pendant on the strings swinging gently to knock against her arm- orange arm brace to match the hat, partially obscured bold black ink marching up the bicep- an almost hidden letter courtesy of the vest, an  **S** that’s been crossed out, followed by  **N N E** ? 

“So… what?” Quoi asks, because- well, because he kind of wasn’t paying attention beyond that an indecent teenager that moves like a d--- animal just took out five fully-grown men with her fists and a pair of shackles that were previously on his wrists and he has no idea when she got them off, saving him from being messily killed because he’s a d--- idiot who got himself sunk to the ocean floor in debt and chained to this stupid island in a desperate attempt to work it off.

She also bit them a few times. Her teeth left  _ marks _ .

Quoi somewhat morbidly wonders where the fires came from, though. They just sort of… started.

… On second thought, it would probably be for the best if that remained a mystery, his brain’s already stalled out for the day.

“Oh!” the young woman slammed the fist holding the shackles into her other open hand, realization brightening her face. “Right, sorry, I was being impolite, wasn’t I? I’m Portgas D. Anne, Captain of the Spade Pirates, and I apologize for my rudeness.”

And then she ducked her head into a little bow, still perched on top of about 300 lbs of muscle.

“... Quoi. Just… I’m Quoi.”  _ D _ . That meant something- some stories he had heard once. Something important- where  _ had _ he heard that? And a pirate? A pirate  _ Captain _ ? Wasn’t she a little young for that?

“It’s very nice to meet you, Quoi.” Anne said cheerfully, and because she’s apparently a persistent little thing, “wanna join my crew?”

… Well, it would get him off the island. 

Even if they ended up dead inside a month, he had been pretty sure he was going to die when he woke up this morning, so that’d still be more than he thought he’d get, and then the brat in front of him would stop looking at him like- that. With those carefully neutral gray eyes holding scraps of guarded hope and that little bit of trepidation not quite hidden behind that polite, cheerful mask she’s got on-

“Fine,” Quoi sighs, and surprise flashes across Anne’s face so fast he almost misses it before it gets buried by a manic sort of grin that sends a shiver down his spine, a sort of thrill of something that’s not quite fear and not quite anticipation, spine inching up a little straighter as he gets the sudden notion that this was probably either the worst or best decision of his life and he’s going to find out which in the next five minutes. “So what do you want me to do, Captain?”

Anne bounds to her feet, hands on her hips, and hums, chewing on the edge of her lip. “First order of business, we need a ship. Mine got trashed-  _ it wasn’t my fault _ -” she added hastily, and so completely defensively there is absolutely no way it  _ wasn’t  _ her fault, “so we’re gonna need that- and provisions- oh, and more crew, if we can find anyone. You’re the first, actually. Do you know anyone who can navigate, I’ve picked up a little, but not enough for the Grand Line yet- oh, and we need someone who can cook, that’s important...”

“... Okay,” Quoi said helplessly, because he has lost control of his life.

This is confirmed not even an hour later when he somehow finds himself in the middle of an eat-n-run, specifically the ‘run’ part, and his new Captain turns around to sweep her hat off and bow to their pursuers and shout “Thank you for the meal!” before they took to the rooftops- and months later, Quoi will look back and wonder at how Anne actually managed to keep that grubby vest on for the entire time, which was a miraculously long time, by their standards.

Then it gets confirmed again when a week later, he and the three other people Anne found who even  _ knows _ where and got to join the crew are, once again, running, this time from the Marine base that pretty much did nothing around the island, and somehow they had stolen a ship and supplies and a  _ Devil Fruit _ , which none of them knew what it was, just that the Captain picked it up, eyed it, then shrugged to herself and bit a mouthful out.

She then proceeded to make a face of absolute disgust, swore, and the fruit caught fire in her hand. 

And then her shoulders were on fire.

And her arm turned  _ into  _ fire.

And then  _ everything  _ was on fire and Quoi was not the only one who started blistering the air with words as they started running. Again.

 

Things escalated. 

 

In short, Anne’s shirt went MIA, which actually was pretty fortunate because she ended up flashing a group of Marines and several ended up out cold on the ground, twitching, blood running from their noses, which, _ seventeen year old girl _ , did they have  _ any _ shame, that one was at least in his late thirties and  _ married _ , you sick piece of-

The others ended up coming to a screeching halt and frantically tried to figure out how to fight a young woman who was not only made of fire but also completely topless and utterly unbothered by it by the way she was grinning, all sharp and eager and almost  _ feral _ , and also gleefully sweeping through them like a hot knife through butter because trying not to look at your opponent’s chest doesn’t do you any favors in a fight. 

And they got to their stolen ship, sailed it away, Anne somehow managed to figure out how to  _ punch fire  _ at things (How. Just. How?), somewhere in there a photographer managed to get a shot in of her, and then Quoi and the only woman who joined up- Leigh, a woman with cloudy white-blue hair and a zweihander that Quoi tended to try to stay far away from when she got swinging- were recruited to ‘please get the captain in a shirt’ duty.

In the days to come, this would soon become the most dreaded duty of them all. When Quoi became first mate, it became his go-to punishment. 

He grew to savoring the groans that would erupt from the unfortunate upon chore assignment. They made him feel powerful.

It was regarded by many to be beyond cruel, a punishment far outweighing any crime. There was this one particular way one’s face had of just  _ crumpling _ into an expression of abject horror that meant you could always tell, no matter if you could hear them or not, when someone had just been assigned the dreaded ‘shirt duty’. It was a heady sort of power, it was, being first mate. Yup.

Look, he had to take joy in the petty things, okay. It kept him going, and from drinking himself into kidney failure every time Portgas D. Anne did anything ever. 

Like infiltrate a Marine base solely to eat all their food. On accident. Or like how almost every time they’d go into a town and within ten minutes, there’d be shouting. Whether it was of panic or outrage was about a 50/50 chance, as was if it was because of their Captain sprinting around with a mouthful of illicitly-acquired food, or on fire. Or both at the same time, which happened more often than you’d think. Or like going into the Grand Line a scant two months after getting her first bounty, which triggered a wave of frantic, anticipatory, semi-eager terror among the crew, which was taken out on the Sea-King that picked that unfortunate moment to surface near the ship to try to eat it.

Bad move there, Sea-King. In consolation, you were very delicious, especially the kebabs.

And like whenever she ended up losing her shirt,  _ again _ , which, over time, morphed from second-hand embarrassment and awkwardness, and ended up just being another source of exasperation, as in the ‘d--- it Anne, not again’ sort. And then they’d take note of who was oogling and smash their faces in, because a) it’s honestly ridiculous how distracted people get by a topless woman and b) that’s  _ our captain _ you’re gawking over you disgusting-

Oh yeah. And the whole Jimbe thing.

Honestly, Quoi would have paid actual money to have the faces of the Whitebeard Pirates when they showed up looking for ‘the person who wanted to take Whitebeard’s head’- and who even knows when that got around, because he sure as h--- never heard Anne say that in  _ his _ hearing- and found a half-pissed, half-panicked, completely exhausted seventeen-and-a-half year old girl mostly on fire and, to them, missing half of her clothes, immortalized in a photograph. He really would, because from those expressions, that was  _ not _ what they were expecting. What, didn’t they read the papers? Shame, shame.

Then of course because Anne is a creative little brat when she gets desperate there was suddenly a fire wall and lots of shouting and to sum it all up the whole mess of a shipwreck ended when the Whitebeard Pirates kidnapped their Captain.

Those poor fools.

 

The first time Quoi met eyes with Marco the Pheonix, who had landed on their ship and proceeded to inform them that their Captain was now going to become one of Whitebeard’s daughters, and they could all either join as well or leave- all the while looking beyond bored, even as the crew surrounding him visibly began considering indulging in the stabby sort of method of expressing displeasure- he knew immediately that he had just found a kindred soul in Captain-induced suffering.

He pitied the man.

And also laughed in his face, because joke’s on you, you kidnapping b------.

She’s _ your _ problem now.

Two days later, Quoi and a small group of Spade Pirates watched gleefully from the railings as a fiery ball of just-awoken freckles and fury exploded from below deck, trailing ribbons of fire, dagger in hand, and yet again, missing her shirt, and cackled like maniacs at the wide-eyed choking that came from practically everyone around to see Anne’s  _ terrible  _ idea of an assassination attempt.

Whitebeard smacked her away, of course, but even the Strongest Man in the World looked mildly… befuddled? Scandalized? Just the sort of plain old wide-eyed disbelief that comes hand-in-hand with breathing the same air as Anne?

Regardless, it was  _ hilarious _ .

“She couldn’t’ve thought that would work,” a Whitebeard nearby said faintly, still looking at the hole in the railing Anne had flown right on through, straight into the ocean. The fishman that had been on deck was half-way up the ladder with the still-limp form of their Captain slung over his shoulder, looking  _ gloriously _ uncomfortable. “It’s  _ Pops _ , he’s not going to just give in and let her kill him because she’s- doing- that…”

Quoi personally took  _ great _ pleasure in informing the steadily more and more horrified-looking pirate not only that that would be the absolute last thing on Anne’s mind, but also about the exact reasons that their ship even had to  _ have _ a punishment entirely centered around getting the Captain to put on a shirt. 

Every excruciating detail of how Anne just honestly  _ doesn’t care _ . The amount of shirts they’ve (literally) burned through in six scant months. Tales full of fire and screaming and that one story that most people apparently thought was a joke, but  _ oh no _ , that really happened, nope, not staged, no actors, not a set,  _ that happened _ .

It probably doesn’t help the other man’s peace of mind that the entire time, he can feel his face stretched into the same sort of shark-satisfied grins he can see on the faces of all the other Spade Pirates in sight, and oh good Lord this is so much more  _ satisfying  _ than any of the vindictive plots he and the crew had tried cooking up.

Anne just  _ existing _ is a revenge all on its own and they don’t even have to lift a  _ finger _ and Quoi could cry, it’s just so beautiful.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Marco the Pheonix pinching the bridge of his nose, and Quoi calls bull on the man’s fruit powers not allowing him to get headaches, like the man had informed one particular Spade Pirate who had cheerfully wished that all of his headaches both literal and metaphorical would multiply ten-fold and haunt him to the end of his days, because that was the  _ picture  _ of someone struck by an Anne-induced migraine.

Quoi waved cheerfully at the man, and beside him, Leigh blew a kiss his way as well, wiggling her fingers innocently even as she kept one eye still on Anne, their beloved Captain having regained enough co-ordination to claw her way to her feet, hissing like an angry cat at the nurse who was trying to get her to sit back down so she could get checked over, because as per usual, Anne had wasted no time in busting out of the infirmary as soon as she regained consciousness from where she had rather anti-climatically collapsed from exhaustion right after declaring her intent to kill Whitebeard no matter how long it took. 

And somehow, on the way, had managed to lose the shirt they had put on her while she was out cold. 

Marco was giving the two of them a very flat look. Birdie was not amused.

Oh well. Quoi would just have to take enough joy from the situation for the both of them, then.

Such a hardship, but he was sure he could manage.

 

-

  
  


Marco is starting to get why the Spade Pirates had laughed at him when he told them about Pops’s intentions regarding their Captain. 

After they had finished looking at him like they wanted to gut him with their eyes, that is. That woman with the blue-white hair and massive sword looked like she was about to take the next step from  _ wanting  _ to  _ doing _ when the first mate- Quoi, he believed- had started laughing so hard he ended up leaning against the wall, and for a moment Marco had wondered if the man had actually been driven to hysterics.

It did not help the confusion, at the time, in the slightest, when all the man said when the angry woman with the sword demanded to know what was so funny about the current situation was a single, hardly understandable wheeze of just “Shirts,” and sudden realization spread across every face, until Marco was surrounded by Spade Pirates howling with laughter like absolute loons. 

Marco has had many regrets in his life. One of them is just dismissing that word like an utter novice as something insignificant, like a crack at his jacket, or an inside joke, when in truth it warning to what the immediate future held.

Because Portgas D. Anne might just end up being the person to finally overwhelm the force of his phoenix healing powers to the point he actually gets a headache.

And if that actually happens he will be so  _ pissed _ and also take the secret to his grave, because he refused to give that Spade Pirate that wished him many painful headaches- he thinks she was one of the cooks, strange for such a small ship to have two, though- the satisfaction of her sweetly-delivered curse coming true.

Spade Pirates. Ugh.

They should have listened to the d--- rumors.

In their defense, they were more than a little laughable- rookie appears out of East Blue, works the Marines into a tizzy over and over by her actions; raiding almost exclusively their bases, leaving a quite literal trail of fire everywhere she went; known for being excessively polite; falling asleep at complete random, but mostly in her own food; frequently being on fire; fighting like a wild animal; the ability to eat over her own weight in food; and for never having a shirt on whenever anyone tried to get a picture for bounties, news, or anything of the sort. It made her a target for more than a few crude remarks among gossipers, especially seeing as the World Government had to keep re-releasing her poster, acting off the desperate hope that this time,  _ this time, _ they’d get a picture of Fire-Fist  _ without _ having to censor things best left unseen by children after that first fit caused by the uncensored starting one.

Who would honestly believe  _ all _ of that?

Most of their crew had been of the opinion it was the woman just messing with her opponents, using her body to distract and draw attention in combat, with the added bonus of being, according to the papers from the Blues, ‘a complete  _ monster _ ’ when it came to physical strength, allowing her to take out the people who faltered at fighting her while her crew took out the rest. It seemed the most logical explanation. 

Of course, everyone had just sort of... passed over the paper’s description of Anne’s strength, not really thinking about it too much. After all, it was from the  _ Blues _ . For them, ‘monstrous strength’ is the Grand Line’s equivalent of ‘normal human’. And besides, Anne is a wiry, freckly, seething little ball of fury and stubbornness, but she’s not exactly built like someone who can shatter a cliffside with an iron pipe and no apparent grasp of Haki, like the paper reported from third-hand eyewitnesses, of all things. And of course, it’s not like appearance dictates strength, but still, they had been pretty confident that they had picked out which parts were more likely to be fact than fiction from the stories.

Note the ‘ _ had _ ’.

Portgas D. ‘Fire-Fist’ Anne (and really, of  _ course _ she was a blasted  _ D _ , what else could she have possibly been)  _ was _ excessively polite- not to the Whitebeards, of course, unless she forgot, as she did a few times- as in fully formal, fancy language apologies and thank-yous, bowing that looked to be complete habit, the works. Anne  _ did _ fall asleep at complete random-  _ everywhere _ . She flipped over the railing twice, actually, in the first week, because she fell asleep. Standing up. In the middle of a conversation. She hadn’t been to the mess hall yet, hiding somewhere in the ship, the stubborn little brat, but the way everything else was going along with the added knowledge that she was a D, she was probably more than capable of eating  _ three times _ her bodyweight in food.

And she really did  _ never have a d--- shirt on when she was fighting _ .

Oh, sure, at the  _ start _ of her little assassination attempts against Pops- the amount of people who went to the infirmary for nosebleeds that first day was  _ shameful _ \- there might be some sort of covering. A wrap. A shirt. A tank-top. A vest. Sometimes a button-up shirt, never actually buttoned. All probably wrestled onto her by her ex-crew, because by now practically everyone on the ship knows that she’d never spend a second of thought about such a ‘pointless’ thing on her own.

By the time Anne either went through a couple of walls or into the ocean, the shirt would have completely vanished.

Not her hat. Not her necklace. Her arm-brace- that the nurses and doctors were  _ seething _ to get their hands on, because apparently  _ everything  _ about it was  _ wrong _ -, the bracelet and log-pose around her wrist, her shorts, her shoes- all of them remained completely untouched by anything other than plain old wear-and-tear that comes from going crashing clean through at least one wooden object a day.

Just the shirt.

Marco had heard the stories the ex-Spade Pirates had been, with a positively  _ unholy _ amount of glee, regaling everyone who would hear with.  They seemed to enjoy telling them like horror stories, complete with whispering, dimly lit rooms, and sudden shouts designed to make others jump. Especially the ones they said were about “ _ shirt duty _ ”- and the fact that they even  _ had _ that in the first place spoke  _ volumes _ \- and the  _ full _ backstory of that three-page story that was in the paper that Marco was pretty sure everyone in the world had thought was just a joke, possibly even paid for by the Spade Pirates, or someone trying to poke fun at them.

It was very much not a joke. It happened. It is, to be honest, actually sort of terrifying to hear the whole thing unfold from beginning to end, right from the mouths of a group of people who were actually  _ there _ and seriously  _ actually did the thing _ .

Freaking  _ Spade Pirates _ .

And there wasn’t  going to be any changing Pops’s mind now and just dumping the lot of them on the next island with a warning, not that he actually met that brat face-to-face. He’s always had too much of a soft spot for the spitfires with  _ issues _ , and you’d have to be blind not to see the seething, tangled mess of baggage that Anne was carrying around, no matter where she went or what she did.

At least the kid could still laugh, poorly-hidden self-hatred, overall air of constantly groping around desperately in the dark for  _ something _ , and  _ issues _ notwithstanding. Even if you’d have to be a Spade for her to so much as smile at you, because, if Marco hadn’t already mentioned- Stubborn brat.

Hopefully she’d start to talk with their own, soon, though, not just her ex-crew. Otherwise Pops’d probably end up sending them to the other ship so she’d  _ have _ to interact with someone other than the ex-Spades, who really  _ were _ enjoying all of this far too much.

Marco had a feeling that if  _ that _ happened, absolutely nobody involved was going to be happy in the slightest.

And if they didn’t all do their bests to make everyone  _ else _ miserable with them, then Marco has been reading these people wrong the entire time.

Ugh, seriously.  _ Spade Pirates. _

 

-

 

“ _ What is the deal with you and shirts _ ,”

“Mmmmnghfff- Wha’?” Anne managed around the insistent tangle of fabric Izo was doing his best to trap and apparently suffocate her in, a grimly determined set to his face.

“ _ Shirts _ , Anne,” he said dryly, as Thatch threw his hands wordlessly in the air, mouth opening and closing but no sound coming out at all. “The things one  _ usually _ wears on the upper torso.”

“I know what a shirt is!” the young woman protested, her struggles hampered by the fabric confining her arms to her side, a flash of bright purple ink showing in a gap for a moment until Izo firmly yanked on the cocoon again. Even the  _ bandages _ covering the half-finished tattoo had vanished. Arm tattoo aside, it seemed the kid really didn’t have any issue with needles, considering that Thatch was told that she had actually  _ fallen asleep _ in every session. Which was good, because she really did pick one heck of a job, there.

“Apparently not, seeing as you appear to be incapable of keeping one on.” Izo was now holding a  _ needle  _ in his teeth, already threaded, and was he seriously about to sew that fabric directly onto her because that was sure what it looked like.

“ _ I think half of the marines we just fought went down because they were too busy staring to fight _ , _ ” _ Thatch said, because nobody else was and seriously, what the heck.

Anne’s face, now visible, was utterly blank with lack of comprehension.

“Nosebleeds,” Thatch said helplessly, because what else could he even say.

Seriously, he knew that some of the crew got some pretty bad ones those first few times Anne tried to kill Pops- Seeing as Anne was a good decade-and-a-half younger than him, Thatch wasn’t one of them, though a handful of his division were out flat on their backs for a solid day a few times- but this was ridiculous.

They’d all gotten pretty used to Anne’s persistent state of shirtlessness, more or less. It kind of lost it’s novelty after happening at least once daily for almost three straight months, though that never stopped Marco from looking two steps away from rubbing at his temples to try and stave off a headache he couldn’t get every time, and happened more and more when the ex-Spades got sent to another ship (so Anne would have to actually talk to someone other than her crew, Marco had said, three bottles of alcohol with the labels peeled off tucked under his arm, and Thatch could recognize that face- Marco was going to drink all three of those bottles and come back for more, because even if he couldn’t get drunk, he was going to  _ try, _ regeneration be d---ed.) and they had had to deal with not only Anne expressing her displeasure with an extra flurry of  _ particularly  _ vicious blitz attacks, but the  _ other _ ex-Spades making their  _ own _ dissatisfaction with the arrangement in their own….  _ creative _ … ways.

The point is, Anne, shirtlessness, most people didn’t even bat an eye at this point. Okay, so maybe the brat actually hates shirts. Or maybe she really is just doing this to mess with everyone. Or maybe she just  _ doesn’t care _ , as the ex-Spades all say, and everyone finally just accepted as probably the truth. It’s not like beyond the occasional nosebleed, anyone got hurt by her wandering around like that, and when she’s not continually attempting enraged murder, she’s a pretty nice kid. 

What people tended to stare at nowadays were things like her tendency to fall asleep in the uncontestedly strangest places at the weirdest times- like in mid-sentence. Or while eating. Mostly while eating. Or they’d stare at  _ that _ , too, but mostly with a sort of morbidly fascinated disgust, because Anne ate like a starving wild animal and has, actually, stabbed someone with a fork when they tried to swipe something off her plate in what looked like an entirely reflexive action.

She apologized, but, well. That person has yet to get within ten feet of Anne’s reach since, so...

_ But the point is _ , when Anne pulled her usual lose-the-shirt-in-under-five-minutes-while-in-a-fight stunt, out fighting off a group of Marines with Thatch and Izo’s divisions, there initially for provision restock, none of their side batted an eye. That was normal. That was just Anne being Anne again, and everyone was understandably more concerned about the fire that Anne had apparently decided would be best applied to  _ everywhere _ .

So the sudden explosive nosebleeds coming from the Marine’s side definitely came as a surprise.

A good handful of them had joined the beaten-insensate forms of their fellows on the ground, blood still trickling from their nostrils, smiling dazedly up at the sky. Another large chunk had bleeding noses and red faces, apparently utterly frozen in place.  _ Others _ had no nosebleed, but were fumblingly trying to figure out how to fight the topless woman without actually looking at her, many doing a impression of a mortified tomato.

There were only a small handful who didn’t bat an eye and just kept fighting, but with a so many of their forces rendered useless, or at least, useless against one certain target, the Whitebeards easily ended up the victors.

That was not, in any way, shape, or form, that Thatch thought he’d ever see a battle won.

“Eh,” Anne shrugged best she could, her elbows now exposed, but at the cost of any mobility of her hands, pinned in place to her stomach. “Yeah, that happens a lot for some reason. Doesn’t really make sense. How do you even get a nosebleed without getting punched in the nose first?”

Thatch gave up.

 

On the other hand, the wrap of fireproof material Izo had sewn directly onto Anne held up admirably. Two whole days and three entire fights before it got torn off. The ex-Spades were regarding Izo with awe for this miracle, and the slightest bit of fear.

“You have a power unlike anything we ever managed,” Thatch overheard one say, voice solemn, to Izo in the mess hall. “Teach us your ways, O mighty one.”

Izo was still unsatisfied, however. He had reportedly threatened that he’d find a way to keep Anne’s torso covered for at least a week’s worth of fights if he had to be repairing the clothing in the middle of battle himself. He also appeared to be considering how best to combine spider-silk with fireproofing, because he will find a fabric Anne can’t destroy if it kills him.

The swordswoman from the Spades had offered to help test the integrity of her fabric using that terrifying sword of hers on it. According to Leigh, she’d seen the end of many shirts come about when her ex-Captain phased through a blade-strike, but for some reason her shirt did not.

Izo had accepted, and Thatch now escapes the area as quickly as possible whenever he sees them together. 

Anne just laughed when one of his division told her that her old crew was conspiring with Izo to make something she couldn’t destroy.

Thatch still honestly can’t tell if Anne genuinely doesn’t get that most women don’t go around half-naked, or if she’s taking everyone’s attempts to get her to  _ wear a d--- shirt for more than a day _ as a sort of challenge, or if she’s just doing this because she’s screwing with them all and thinks it’s funny.

He  _ would _ think she weaponized it on purpose, with today as proof, if he didn’t have a handful of months of proof from his own eyes and from the Spades that Anne is physically incapable of thinking of using her body as a weapon in any way other than the literal path of hitting things and setting them on fire.

… Maybe he could bribe the answer out of her with food?

Thatch considered.

Then he shrugged to himself and headed to the kitchen, because, well, worth a shot, right?

And even if that didn’t work, hey, there’d be more chances, more plans, and all the time in the world to tease out the answer to the question of just why Portgas D. Anne was incapable of not losing her shirt at the drop of a hat.

They’d have plenty of time to get to know their newest sister, now that she’d dropped trying to take Pops’s head and let herself be drawn into the crew. Maybe she was still visibly holding herself back a bit from letting herself be fully drawn in, and maybe she still had moments where she stumbled over calling Whitebeard Pops. Maybe sometimes when people were swapping stories on lazy nights, at times something would make her face go dark and she’d slip away and stare out at the sea for hours. Maybe she always shied away talking about things like family, unless it was about her younger brother, in which case her face would light right up, even though sometimes while she rambled she’d visibly choke over parts where it would sound like another person should be, the start of a name.

But hey, that was her business. That was Anne’s past, Anne’s issues, and if she felt like sharing, one day she would. If not, well, there were a lot of people of the Moby for who joining the crew was, to them, their starting point, and for who nothing from before was relevant. Heck, _ Thatch _ has his own mess of a past he left behind when he took up Whitebeard’s mark, and there are moments from back then that people will have to pry from his cold, dead corpse if they wanted to know details. 

Anne would talk if she wanted to talk. In the meantime, she was still opening up a little bit more every day, and that meant here was another child of the sea to learn about, another sibling full of unique quirks and attitude and personality to get to know.

Thatch was looking forward to it.

 

**BONUS- The Mountain Bandits**

Okay, so maybe they should have seen this coming.

The kid grew up in the d--- woods with two adopted brothers (later, just the one), and it’s not like the brat stuck around their safehouse long enough to do more than doze a bit and eat before shooting back off to go fight bears or whatever it was she did, and then she hardly showed at all after they built that treehouse.

And all of Dadan’s bandits, with the exception of herself, are male, because Kenzie wanted to start a family, and Autumn went and joined the  _ Marines _ , of all the d--- things, how she even got in is a mystery, and most of them are scattered to the winds anyway, tucked away in little pockets for the closest thing to retirement they can get.

And of course that Makino girl hardly showed her face either, a trip or two up the mountain and the brats apparently went and pestered her once in a blue moon.

It’s not like anyone ever actually  _ told _ Anne that girls aren’t supposed to go shirtless.

Dadan just. Sort of assumed the brat would pick it up through… context. Noticing on her own. Whatever. Like she did.

So, of course, the brat didn’t.

Which led to the current situation.

“You can’t- you can’t  _ do _ that,” was all the stupefied bandit could say in the face of the determined little girl as their fearless leader gibbered angrily to herself in a corner.

“ _ Watch me _ ,” came the immediate reply, right along with a gray glare sharp enough to  _ cut _ , jaw clenched, arms crossed, and  _ ooh boy _ he’s not dealing with this.

The bandit backed away quickly as Dadan finally erupted back up from her corner, now recovered, and jabbing a finger right in the little brat’s face as she loomed. Anne was very clearly unimpressed.

“ _ Shaddap!” _ roared Dadan, cursing Garp in every way she could think of, usually a soothing activity, but currently failing to do its job, “ ‘Less you look enough like a boy that no one’ll notice-  _ which you don’t _ \- yer’ wearin’ a shirt when you go into town!”

“Piss off!”

“ _ Get back here! _ ”

 

And so began what basically amounted to Anne going out of her way to show up at the bandit’s safehouse completely shirtless as often as possible, and the bandits doing their best to chase the speedy brat down and force a shirt over her head.

Really. Why didn’t they figure that the brat from the trash heap and  _ Garp’s brat _ wouldn’t know that while going shirtless in the heat might be normal for them, females just  _ don’t _ .

And the rubber brat  _ still  _ doesn’t get it, because he was confused the entire time Mogra tried to explain in a horribly faltering way and finally just laughed in his face and went to back his sister up.

And  _ Garp _ was, as per usual, the exact opposite of help. 

As in, when they told him out of sheer desperation, he frowned, applied a Fist of Love to Anne’s head, and broke into a speech packed full of Marine Integrity which basically, in short, could be summed up to him ordering “Don’t do that.”

Which of course just made the d--- brat that much more stubborn about it. Why did they think Garp would do anything other than inflame the situation, again?

The war raged on for years. On one side- Portgas D. Anne, with occasional backup from Monkey D. Luffy. On the other- Dadan’s bandits, the occasional Garp, and a large portion of the village of Foosha.

And of all the luck, of course the one woman who the two brats somewhat listened to refrain from taking sides, that audacious little leaf-haired barmaid. Makino seemed to find it all far too amusing, and just laughed and said she had already explained things to Anne, made sure the girl understood what sort of attention she’d be inviting as she aged, and Anne had declared that that was stupid and she was going to be a pirate, so she’d do as she liked.

She then added that with her level of physical strength, it was hardly like the girl would be unable to fight off any unwelcome advances or be incapable of beating someone’s face in for being crude to her, and that some things tended to be less likely to happen the more they were pressed, and would you care for another beer to be added to your tab?

But of course they couldn’t just let the brat win like that, so the war continued right up until the day Anne turned seventeen and sailed off.

The brat’s goodbye, boat starting to draw away from the shore, concluded in her tearing off the unbuttoned top Makino had persuaded her to put on ‘just for a picture, okay?’, chucking it back in the direction of the shore, and shouting, “Thanks for the beads, old hag, only top I’ll ever need!”

Dadan proceeded to spend the next five hours very drunk.

 

The final straw was when Anne’s first bounty poster came to Foosha.

Dadan’s head hit the table with a  _ thunk _ , tormented groan tearing itself free from her throat. Garp’s brat was bouncing around, excitedly shoving his sister’s bounty in people’s faces with a grin that practically split his face, completely oblivious to the way everyone  _ else _ almost instantly choked, went red, started bleeding from the nose, or all three at once. A very small percentage just stared, utterly blank-faced, which had been Dadan’s reaction.

Makino had burst out laughing. The woman appeared to be getting a fresh taste of enjoyment at every new reaction the poster prompted.

Garp was going to kill them.

Woopslap had been going on for ten minutes now about how Anne had been raised into a ‘shameless nudist’ and the poor reputation she’d bring on their town even beyond being a d--- pirate, ohhhhh, didn’t he say-

He showed no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Oh, like you didn’t try to get her to put a shirt on just as much as we did, old geezer,  _ you know exactly how hard that is _ -

The  _ thump _ of the thick glass of a bottle prompted Dadan to unpeel her face from the table and look up, forbidding glare pasted on. 

Makino smiled sweetly at the bandit leader. “You looked like you might have needed this. On the house.”

Dadan looked at the bottle. Looked at the innocent-faced bartender. Looked at the rubbery brat bouncing around still shoving that  _ d--- poster _ in the face of everyone who walked in the bar. Looked back at the bottle.

And then a loud, crude comment hit the air, filtering through the general buzz of the bar, coming from the table just off the door. 

A crude comment about  _ her brat _ . 

Laughter erupted from the table, and the initial speaker tossed out another, joking about not being able to talk about the sorts of things he wanted to do with a woman like  _ that _ , or they’d be there all night. 

More laughter.

Dadan grabbed the bottle and took a deep swallow.

Then she stood up, cracked her knuckles, and decked the man who spoke in the face.

“What was that,” Dadan snarled into his dazed face, “About  _ my _ brat, jacka--?”

So maybe she hadn’t so much as raised the brat as let her go feral in the woods. So maybe she had been far from even a sorry excuse for a mother. But the brats were strong. They hadn’t needed one. They still didn’t need one, those insufferably independent, stubborn little monsters. 

But they were still  _ her _ brats, d--- it all. They had slept in little tangled puppy piles under her roof. They had eaten all of her food and brought back dead animals in return on a regular basis. For ten years a stormy little freckled face had brought back small spoils and kept them in a niche under a floorboard and thought it was a secret. They had spend almost half a grief-stricken week curled up in the little storeroom that Anne threw all the crates out of after Sabo had been shot down in his bid for freedom.

Random drunken a--holes in bars didn’t  _ get _ to make  _ comments _ about  _ her _ brat without consequences.

Makino had dragged Luffy, reluctant and protesting, behind the bar. Her bandits had noticed their leader’s actions and started to amble over, evening the numbers of the offenders and his drunken little friends. Notably, Makino had not signaled her bouncers of the night.

Dadan took that to mean they were perfectly welcome to do the job for them.

A few minutes later, the bandits were back to enjoying their slightly-discounted alcohol, Luffy was once again showing off his sister’s “awesome bounty”, and Makino was making a killing out of the money of the people who wandered in to check out the fuss and found themselves seated while an enthusiastic fourteen-year-old-boy shoved the…  _ interesting _ … poster in their faces.

Dadan enjoyed her free booze, and thought that the little blond brat would have been laughing like the demented little maniac he was, had he been around to see this.

Hah. Who says he wasn’t?

Dadan drank, hiding a smile that definitely wasn’t fond in the slightest, d--- it.

 

A week later, the New Coo delivered the paper, and on the front page, her brat grinned out, fire everywhere, bright orange hat from the rubber brat still firmly on her head, those beads still around her neck, and yet again, not a shirt in sight, the photo awkwardly cropped so as not to show anything  _ untoward _ .

**ROOKIE SPADES PIRATES CAPTAIN, FIRE-FIST ANNE, DESTROYS MARINE BASE**

TOPLESS FIREBRAND’S POSTER CAUSING UNREST AMONG CONCERNED PARENTS-

 

Dadan spends the next hour screeching into her pillow.

 

**Author's Note:**

> … Ahahaha.  
> Um.  
> My first piece of writing put up anywhere ever  
> And it’s this thing.  
> …  
> IREGRETNOTHINGGGG  
> (except kinda the entire section of Anne and Quoi’s first conversation because how did Ace even get people to join his crew aaaaargh everything about anne’s personality there feels off and I don’t like it but I couldn’t come up with anything else *tableflip*)  
> (anyway the idea for this popped into my head literally right after I woke up and I wrote this thing in fits and starts over the course of two days in varying states of sleep-deprivation and mashed in several sections of rough female!Ace concept snippets I’ve had floating around in my docs for like two months and I’m pretty sure it’s not even that coherent or anything but I have been looking at this so long and it is early enough I have lost the ability to even tell anymore so blame all of the any inconsistencies in story and style on that okay)  
> (also all the swear words are censored because writing swearing bothers me and trying to write around it made it even clunkier than it already is  
> so  
> just take this while I’m still tired enough to think putting this up where other people can read it won’t end in disaster  
> jelly out.)


End file.
